A Harmless Little War.

Way back in the seventies when the might of NATO and the Soviet Bloc were engaged in that perilous stand-off known as the Cold War, Britain and Iceland had a private little dust up called the Cod Wars. It was all to do with those uncouth Nordic fishermen nicking our fish, and up with that we would not put!

They had gunboats called Thor and Odin. We had frigates called Phoebe and Ariadne. Our guns were bigger than theirs, our ships were bigger than theirs, and our ships had bigger names than theirs. But their ships’ names were a bit more … erm… manly, which is probably why the whole thing ended in something of a tie and we carried on speaking to them, at least during the summer months when Iceland was open. The only injury suffered on either side was occasioned to a young British sub-lieutenant who injudiciously attempted to hail an Icelandic captain by name and succumbed to severe lingual cramps. And nobody, as far as I recall, ever went short of fish.